A sound cut through the air — deep, resonant, like the distant hum of a galaxy's heart. It wasn't just heard; it was felt, vibrating in bone and soul alike.
Chiaki stood at the center of it all, unmoving, framed by a perfect ring of nova-white energy. The aura bled outward like steam under impossible pressure, each wave slamming into the ground beneath her feet. Cracks spiderwebbed out from her stance, the sheer force pressing the air into something tangible.
Rhaziel planted his feet, bracing himself — not out of caution, but because he knew. This was the opponent he had been destined to face. His posture loosened, his arms falling lazily to his sides, but his eyes never left hers. The silver glow burning in Chiaki's gaze reflected in his own pupils like molten stars.
A smirk, cold and knowing, tugged at his lips.
"Finally…" he said, his voice low, edged with hunger for the fight. "The real you. The power that set your bounty sky-high before you could even walk. The force that burned through the system, tore it apart… and let you slip through their grasp."
Rhaziel spread his arms wide, watching as a single tear traced its way down Chiaki's cheek. It revealed nothing of weakness — only the quiet, unshakable care she now carried for Temoshí. But even that final drop never reached the ground; it evaporated instantly in the heat of the energy radiating from her body, erased by the force of her awakening.
Silence fell. Then she moved.
One step forward — slow, deliberate — and the ground seemed to groan beneath her, the air vibrating with each shift of her weight. This was still the same girl who, moments ago, had been drowning in raw emotion… and yet, she was not. The wound on her shoulder was gone, erased as though time itself had been commanded to undo it.
Rhaziel mirrored her advance, taking a single stride before pausing, his eyes locked on hers. Chiaki, however, didn't stop. Step after step, she closed the distance, her presence heavy enough to warp the air between them. She was the center of the storm — the axis around which the battlefield turned.
Even Blythe, half-shielded behind his fractured mask, could not hide the shock widening his eyes.
"That's… Chiaki?" His voice trembled, half in awe, half in disbelief. "She's had that power since she was a baby? I–I knew we were siblings, but I've never seen anything like this. I always suspected she was hiding something… but not this. Not something so destructive. Soul Resonance is supposed to be an art of defense, a way to heal souls, to link hearts…" He swallowed hard, his gaze flickering over the energy bleeding from her like wildfire. "But this… this is nothing I could have predicted."
Rhaziel's voice cut through the charged air, smooth yet laced with mockery, as if savoring the spectacle she was about to unleash.
"No matter how much power you think you hold, my dear… I am immortal. Every ounce of pain you hurl at me will simply take root elsewhere. I will sever your soul — and I intend to keep that promise. I've never broken one before… and I won't start now."
A low, almost amused chuckle escaped him, the kind of laugh born from someone convinced they were untouchable. In his mind, he was a ruler, a god draped in absolute authority. But beneath that bravado, the truth gnawed — his grandeur was little more than armor to mask the fragility within.
"Come now," he taunted, spreading his arms wide, inviting her in. "Strike me. I'll even let you land the first blow. I'm standing right here, Chiaki… ready to show you exactly what I am."
He stood there, chest exposed, eyes fixed on her every movement — baiting her, daring her, desperate to prove she was powerless. She was the one he had hunted, the one he had vowed to destroy… and now, she was right before him, poised to make her move.
A step.
Another.
Then the faint, surreal sound of water splashing rippled through the air — though no water existed in the room. It was the sound of reality itself bending under her presence.
Chiaki's final stride came without warning — and then the unimaginable happened.
A flash like the flare of a dying star ripped through the chamber, followed by the violent shriek of steel tearing itself apart. In that instant, she vanished, leaving behind a maelstrom so fierce it devoured every scrap of loose debris, pulling it into a spiraling vortex like a tornado tearing through a storm-battered plain.
Then came the sound — sharp, alien, and brittle — like a mirror shattering in a pitch-black tunnel, its echoes bouncing endlessly through the room. And with that sound came the rupture. The air itself fractured, pieces of reality breaking and splintering before their eyes.
She was there.
Right before Rhaziel's face, airborne, one leg trailing like the blade of a scythe pulled back for the kill.
The motion was poetry wrapped in violence. Her leg swung forward in a perfect arc, and the air around it detonated, unleashing a shockwave that howled louder than a wolf crying to a blood moon. The force compressed the air so violently it burned against the skin, pressure stabbing into the ears.
Then—impact.
The instep of her foot slammed into Rhaziel's face with a sound that was both a thunderclap and the breaking of bone. For him, it was no single strike — it was three concussive blows condensed into one impossible instant, each one snapping through his skull before his mind could even register the first. His head snapped sideways so violently it felt as though his neck had been torn halfway from his spine.
The shockwave didn't end there. The ground beneath him erupted as if a bomb had gone off at his feet, magnifying the force that tore him away. His body became a ragdoll, spinning uncontrollably, launched sideways through the forest with a velocity that defied reason.
He tore through tree after tree — not one, not two, not even three — but a relentless row of towering trunks. Each one exploded into splinters on impact, showering the air with shards of wood like shrapnel. The sheer kinetic force carved a path of destruction through the landscape, a scar across the earth.
Then his momentum broke — violently. His skull slammed into a massive boulder with such force that the stone itself cracked, fractured, and shattered into a spray of pebbles. The rebound from the impact hurled him upward into the air again, like a lifeless doll caught in the hands of a storm.
He wasn't just hit.
He was erased from his footing, his pride, his sense of invincibility — all torn apart in the blink of an eye.
Then—again—Chiaki was gone.
No blur. No warning.
Just absence.
And then, in the very next heartbeat, a streak of blinding white split the air like a divine thunderbolt, tearing across the battlefield with a sound that split eardrums. She caught Rhaziel mid-flight — his body already limp from the previous strike. His eyes were rolled back into an empty, snow-white void, his mouth coughing up a spray of deep crimson. Droplets of blood spun away from his face in slow arcs before the rushing wind snatched them into nothing.
That first kick hadn't just staggered him — it had ripped every last thread of awareness from his mind.
But Chiaki was far from done.
In the open air, with his helpless form dangling before her, she twisted her body mid-flight — spinning with such velocity that the air itself coiled around her like a tightening drill. Her leg arched high over her head, cutting a perfect crescent through the sky, before she brought it crashing down like a falling star.
Her heel slammed into the crown of Rhaziel's skull.
The impact was apocalyptic. Inside his head, it was as if a cathedral bell the size of a mountain had been struck — a metallic echo ringing endlessly in his mind before pain tore through his entire being. The sheer force folded him in half before gravity even had a chance to take him.
He plummeted.
The descent was so violent the air around him combusted into a chain of blinding white shockwaves, each one tearing through the sky like miniature supernovas. His skin prickled, then burned — the speed of the drop igniting the air around his body like friction-fueled fire.
And then—impact.
He hit the ground with a sickening crack, his spine bending at an unnatural angle before snapping back. The collision unleashed a vortex of white energy that tore upward in a roaring pillar, splitting the night with a light brighter than the moon. The sheer pressure wave blasted pebbles and boulders into the air like toys, the ground fracturing outward in jagged veins of destruction.
When the dust finally began to settle, the earth bore the mark of her wrath — a crater wide enough to swallow buildings whole. And at its center lay Rhaziel, sprawled like a broken marionette, eyes still rolled white, pupils lost to oblivion, his body utterly still in the aftershock of her assault.
Chiaki descended from the air like a falling petal, her landing silent, precise — almost too calm for the devastation she'd just unleashed. She stood over Rhaziel's broken form, her silver-bright eyes flat and lifeless, as if staring into nothing. No pity. No rage. No warmth. Only a hollow stillness.
Slowly, she lowered herself into a crouch, one hand hanging loosely at her side before drifting toward his chest. Her palm hovered over his heart — not gently, but with the promise of finality.
"Give it up, Rhaziel," she said, her voice quiet, almost cold enough to burn. "You tried to sever my soul. His soul. Even Morvain's… But you never once thought you'd be the one choking on that same fate, did you? Good. Because now you get to taste your own poison."
A gleam flared from her palm — blinding white at the core, ringed in a razor-sharp frame of deep red. The air around her hand hissed, the energy so concentrated it warped the space between them.
That was when she heard it.
His voice.
"P-Please… don't…" Rhaziel's breath rattled, every syllable scraped from what little strength he had left. "I… beg you… I'll… fix… everything…"
The plea didn't soften her. It cut deeper.
Her gaze sharpened, and for the first time, a shadow of emotion flickered — not mercy, but something darker. "You dare?" she hissed. "After what you've done? After the lives you shattered? You beg for mercy like you deserve to escape the pain you forced on others?"
Her fingers curled slightly, energy pulsing harder with each word.
"Throw your pride away if you want… but don't you ever think you can beg your way out of suffering."
Her palm pressed harder into his chest, the red-rimmed white glow pulsing in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat — each beat weaker than the last. The air was thick, the kind that made breathing feel like swallowing glass.
Rhaziel coughed, blood flecking his lips, his body trembling under the crushing weight of her power. For the first time in his long existence, his voice was stripped bare, unguarded.
"Chiaki… don't— please… I know what you're doing—"
"You should know!" Her voice cracked like a thunderclap, every word vibrating through the ground. "You've dealt it enough times to understand exactly what's coming for you! The void! The silence! The endless, hollow nothing!"
The glow surged beneath her hand, and the earth around them groaned, deep cracks spiderwebbing outward. Rhaziel's teeth clenched, his body arching from the pain burning through his soul itself.
"You know what Soul Severance does!" Chiaki's words were sharper than any blade. "It's not death — death is a kindness you never deserved! Severance strips you from existence itself! No one remembers you, no one can remember you — you're erased! Just another scream swallowed by nothing!"
His breath hitched, panic erupting into desperation. "Please— Chiaki— I'll—"
"SHUT UP!" she roared, her silver eyes burning with a fury that threatened to consume her. "You dare beg now?! After what you did to him?! To them?! After every soul you carved apart like it was nothing?! You think you've earned mercy?!"
The light blazed, swallowing the world in blinding white. Rhaziel's scream tore through the air, not just in pain, but in the terror of someone staring into the void they once inflicted on others. His hands twitched, trying to grab hers, but the strength to resist had long since abandoned him.
Then… the light faded.
Rhaziel collapsed beneath her, gasping, chest heaving, eyes wide in disbelief.
"You… didn't… finish…"
Chiaki straightened, her hand sliding away from his chest as the last trails of light curled off her fingertips like smoke. Her voice was calm now, but it cut deeper than her fury ever could.
"No. I didn't sever it. I locked it."
His brow furrowed, confusion flaring into dawning horror. "Locked…?"
"I chained the part of you that could ever use Soul Severance again," she said coldly. "You'll live. But you'll never touch another soul. Ever." She stepped closer, her shadow falling over his broken body. "You get to keep breathing — but the only thing that made you dangerous is gone. Forever."
Rhaziel's breath stuttered, the weight of her words sinking in like a blade between his ribs. Chiaki didn't wait for him to speak again. She turned, the dust swirling around her feet as she walked away, her tone final.
"Death would have freed you. I'm not here to free you."
The pressure in his chest refused to ease. Every breath rattled like glass in his throat, his pulse slowing into uneven thuds. His legs buckled, but he forced them straight, trying to will his vision into focus.
The world was already peeling away in blurs—stone walls smudging together, light bending, shadows dripping like spilled ink.
Chiaki was walking away.
Her steps were steady, deliberate, boots clicking faintly against the ground. Even in his fractured sight, her back was sharp—shoulders squared, hair swaying faintly as if untouched by the tension in the air.
He wanted to say something—call her name, curse her, anything—but his tongue felt heavy, his breath too thin.
The distance between them seemed to stretch unnaturally, her figure receding far faster than her pace should allow.
His knees finally gave out. Cold stone met his palms, then his cheek.
The last thing he saw was her silhouette swallowed by the fog of his dimming vision, her head never turning back.
"Next time... I won't be so kind."
And then—black.
To be continued...